Liquid Lens Can Magnify at the Flick of a Switch

An anonymous reader writes "German engineers have designed the first liquid camera lens with no moving parts that provides two levels of zoom. 'Liquid lenses bend light using the curved boundary between watery and oily liquids. When the two liquids are held in the right container, the boundary between them can be made to curve in a way that focuses light simply by applying a voltage. Liquid lenses have attracted much attention because they are potentially smaller than conventional optics and cheaper to build. Samsung has already built them into some cellphones.'"

Lens isn't working

[sconeu (64226)]

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Seeing double??

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

With better lenses we might see that this is a dup. These were reported in the media, and slashdot, a year or so back.

Re:

[tedgyz (515156)]

With better lenses we might see that this is a dup. These were reported in the media, and slashdot, a year or so back.

Sorry if we can't all remember back that far!
I must have had my beer goggles on.

Re:

[Nullav (1053766)]

I'm afraid the goggles do nothing. I'm sorry.

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[ozbird (127571)]

With better lenses we might see that this is a dup.

Don't you mean a mirror?

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[Leontes (653331)]

What about using these in reading glasses or goggles. People find bifocles somewhat frustrating due to the disruption to field of vision.

I can imagine: Let me put on my glasses. Oh, they are set for concave. ::tap:: Presto, convex.

I guess there *is* something to see.

Re:

[Fordiman (689627)]

Since they operate via surface tension, and would thus have to be horizontally arranged in order to have no distortion, my guess is that using such technology for glasses wouldn't work well.

This is old

[2.7182 (819680)]

A guy did this at Bell Labs 2 years ago, and around the same time so did some French company that was going to put them in cell phones.

Re:This is old

[nick_davison (217681)]

"German engineers have designed the first... Samsung has already built them into some cellphones.'"

Bell Labs aand Samsung used a time machine. It clearly says the German engineers have just done it first. The only possible explanation for Bell Labs doing it two years ago and Samsung having already built it in to cell phones is that they went forward in time in some kind of a time machine, possibly involving a flux capacitor of some sort, and brought the technology back with them to before it was first implemented.

That, or it's a badly phrased article.

In related news, German scientists have designed the first "circular device for the conveying of people and objects" and the first "source for the creation of heat and light by combustion of a 'fuel'." We may mock but the USPTO will still grant them a patent on the lot of it.

Re:This is old

[by Anonymous Coward]

This is about liquid lenses with zoom capability, which is new.

Samsung etc. have had liquid lenses, but they haven't been able to do zoom. The German researchers found out how to make it work.
Hope that helps.

Re:

[2.7182 (819680)]

Read my sig - they did it at Bell in 2003.

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[hubie (108345)]

That same summary also said that these Germans designed the first liquid lenses. Those Samsung guys must do a pretty quick turnaround.

Shake It

[Joebert (946227)]

If I shake it before snapping a photo, do I get a really cool bubble-like effect ?

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[by Anonymous Coward]

That's what I told your wife too, but she didn't listen....

Herbert used it in Dune in 1965...

[KokorHekkus (986906)]

Are there any earlier mentions of liquid lenses before Dune? The article links seems to think he was firtst. Even if there is, it's still a pretty nice catch by Frank Herbert.

Will you look at that thing! Stilgar whispered. Paul lay beside him in a slit of rock high on the shield wall rim, eye fixed to the collector of a Fremen telescope. The oil lens was focused on a starship lighter exposed by dawn in the basin below them. The tall eastern face of the ship glistened in the flat light of the sun, but the shadow side still showed yellow portholes from glowglobes of the night.

(ref. source http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=52 [technovelgy.com]

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[shrikel (535309)]

Except in Dune, the oil was suspended in a force field, allowing perfect (and perfectly adjustable) refraction. I've long wanted a telescope like that. No more recollimating my scope every time I take it somewhere out in the boonies over a bumpy dirt road!

Re:Herbert used it in Dune in 1965...

[pclminion (145572)]

Changing the shape of a lens doesn't adjust its refraction, it just... changes the shape of the lens. Refractivity is a property of the material, not the geometry of the lens.

Re:

[644bd346996 (1012333)]

Not quite. Look straight through a flat piece of glass. Not a whole lot of distortion. Now look through a piece of glass with the same radius and volume, but thicker in the center than at the edges. Pretty different, huh?

The light has to both enter and leave the lens. That's two transitions between materials with different indices of refraction. It matters very much what the angles of incidence are and the relative differences between them.

The way you've worded your post is pretty much a flat contradiction

Re:

[pclminion (145572)]

The way you've worded your post is pretty much a flat contradiction of all optics since Newton. Go look up what a lens is.

I didn't say the shape of a lens doesn't matter. I said it doesn't alter the refractivity (and by that I mean its index of refraction). Of COURSE it alters the behavior of the lens. Refractivity is an intensive property, the geometry of the lens is an extensive property.

Perhaps my wording wasn't as clear as it should have been. The point stands that the shape of a lens does not alt

Re:

[hubie (108345)]

The other guy posting is correct: refraction is only a property of the material and doesn't depend on the shape of the optic. Ultimately where the light rays go and their dependence on the shape of the optic enters into it via Snell's law [wolfram.com].

If you take a slab of material with a constant index of refraction, you can change the path of light rays going through it by changing the shape of the surface of a material, just like you describe. Another way to do it is to take a flat slab of material, like looking

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[obender (546976)]

Are there any earlier mentions of liquid lenses before Dune?

In the Mysterious Island novel by Jules Verne published in 1874, Cyrus Harding lits a fire with a lens made up of two watch glass lids stuck together and filled up with water. You can read the chapter here [online-literature.com]

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[KokorHekkus (986906)]

Very nice reference! I recall reading that story (quite some while ago though :). Not a zoom lens (as in Dune or in the article)... but to me it's still definitly a precursor the idea of a non-fixed liquid lens.

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[frankmu (68782)]

asimov in "foundation and empire" had a force field lens of some sort i think. darn, all of my scifi books are at my parents house!

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[TrixX (187353)]

There are previous references, in anatomy books. You are probably using two adjustable (for focus, not zoom) liquid lenses to read this reply, unless you get a braille or aural representation of /.

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[Pieroxy (222434)]

Given it's more or less the way our eye lens works, I'd say God (or Darwin, pick your choice) got the precedence over there. Just because it's written in a SciFi book doesn't quite mean it's new.

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[john83 (923470)]

Sorry, but liquids bending light does not qualify as a mystery of nature. Theory and math behind optics is taught in high school physics...

They teach ray tracing in high school physics. Between that and the real physics - Maxwell's equations - is a bit of a gap.

nearly on-topic: liquid crystal focussing

[c_jonescc (528041)]

This immediately reminded me of a talk I saw recently by Guoqiang Li from U. of Arizona. They're using liquid crystal lenses to make glasses with variable focusing power as a function of applied voltage. You could flip a switch to be able to see near or far - so if you're near-sighted but getting to the age where reading glasses would help, you're the touch of a button away.

Liquid zoom is quite cool too, but thought this related enough to pass on.

fyi:
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/84/i15/8415lenses.htm l
(PNAS citation in article)

Hubble

[tedgyz (515156)]

It sure would have made fixing the Hubble a lot easier.

Earth to Hubble: Adjust lens voltage to 1.537mV.

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[Anonymous Monkey (795756)]

Forget the Hubble, think how much some one who wore trifocals would ware for a pair of glasses that could sense distance and adjust. Or how much I would pay for my distance glasses to 'turn off' if I was reading. I would put up with a bit more bulk on my face because it would reduce eye strain.

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[john83 (923470)]

...Or how much I would pay for my distance glasses to 'turn off' if I was reading. I would put up with a bit more bulk on my face because it would reduce eye strain.

You could just take them off.

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[tedgyz (515156)]

Except, of course, that Hubble's MIRROR had spherical abberation and this is talking about lenses....

Ok, so fill the "lens" with Mercury. Work with me here.

Can I take camera as carry on luggage?

[Palmyst (1065142)]

If it contains liquid?

with a technology like this...

[MorderVonAllem (931645)]

...could you somehow have a lens with multiple focus points? I'm thinking if you have 4 people in a picture you could focus on each of their faces with one lens and have a nice picture with everyone in focus rather than someone in the background a bit blurry.

Re:with a technology like this...

[Achromatic1978 (916097)]

Uhh, no need. You can do that with glass lenses. Its called depth-of-field, aperture, etc. The higher the f number, the deeper it is. Up the f, increase the depth of field, everyone is in focus (at the cost of decreased shutter speed - the f number is a ratio of 1/x of the diameter of the lens, so less light). Down the f number and you get nice portraits where only a small DOF exists and everything forward, or back, is out of focus.

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[Negadecimal (78403)]

Up the f, increase the depth of field, everyone is in focus

That is, until diffraction effects start to kick in. Had to learn that one the hard way: shooting product shots at a maximum f/29 until discovering mysteriously sharper images at f/12. Now, I'll admit I don't know how much of that truly is diffraction (as opposed to a cheaper lens), but do I know it's something to consider.

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[hubie (108345)]

The effect of diffraction is pretty easy to calculate (assuming both your lenses are "perfect" and have circular apertures). The size of the blur spot due to diffraction is roughly 2.44*L*F, where L is the wavelength of light and F is the f-number. So, your f/29 lens has a blur spot that is a little bigger than twice that of the f/12 lens. If you are talking about a digital camera, than it is a bit simpler to compare the blur spot against the pixel size. If it is on film, then you need to compare it aga

Re:

[migloo (671559)]

If you have coaxial annular lenses, each with its own focal length, you get as many focal planes. You can thus make a multifocused picture at the cost of more blurry background.
This has been used for bifocal soft lenses for presbyopia. Focus splitting with diffraction gratings is more commonly used now.

Great for Democracy

[soren100 (63191)]

This liquid lens technology sounds like it might really help create tiny and cheap cameras that people can use to bring more justice to the world.

It seems that police brutality is getting so common now that they are willing to beat members of the media on camera [youtube.com]. (The clip begins with the narrator suggesting that the protestors were "asking for it" by throwing rocks at the police, but they can't spin the footage of their own camerapeople getting beaten up.)

What's worse, is that police now tend to focus o

Re:Great for Democracy

[Lorkki (863577)]

Then the police can keep policing the citizens, but the citizens can also police the police.

But if the police police police police, who will police the police police?

Re:

[wall0159 (881759)]

"But if blah blah blah blah blah, who will blah blah blah blah?"

I'm sorry, I don't understand your comment - can you elaborate?

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[Eli Gottlieb (917758)]

Wait a second... somehow, your UID is fairly low, but your post reads like a screed directly off Reddit. What gives?

Seriously, why turn an article on scientific discovery into a political... essay?

A little earlier

[UtilityFog (654576)]

from here [microscopy-uk.org.uk]: In the Philosophical Transactions (Abridged), Volume 4, 1694-1702 pp. 97-101 + 1 plate, there is an article by Stephen Gray on "Microscopical Observations and Experiments" in which Mr. Gray explains the making of a water microscope.

Camera perhaps, but not telescope

[Nefarious Wheel (628136)]

I believe one of the early English astronomical refractor telescopes (one of William Herschel's iirc, possibly the 20-foot one) had a lens made of two hemispherical pieces of glass filled with white wine.

Stupid dylsexia

[theonetruekeebler (60888)]

I first read that as "liquor lens" and thought somebody had finally made a working pair of beer goggles...

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[eln (21727)]

First of all, you misspelled "Nabors".

Secondly, I'm as big a fan of Gomer Pyle as the next guy, but I think spying on Jim Nabors (much less calling him "your" Nabors) is a little over the top.

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[pclminion (145572)]

Wouldn't the motion of electrons in a CPU be considered a moving part? Look ma, I've proven that "solid state" is a myth!

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[hubie (108345)]

Unless you are designing a hydraulic system.

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[It'sYerMam (762418)]

How do you know the quality of this new lens; have you seen many pictures using them, or do you have a working theory that shows liquid lenses will produce poor quality images? Surely liquid is a good road to go down, since you can tailor the material to the purpose. Glass isn't as flexible. (No pun intended.)

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[hubie (108345)]

You can make a pretty good educated guess, or guesses. The liquid surface tension will want to pull the lens into a spherical shape, which doesn't give great imaging performance (especially off axis). Also, if only one lens is used, then you'll get chromatic distortions where your image quality depends on the wavelengths of light. I would be interested to see whether the camera phones that use these lenses give better images than those that used a fixed focus lens.

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[hubie (108345)]

They have them now. The going price for them in is the neighborhood of Six Million Dollars [imdb.com].